Key Messages

Scale Prevention

What is Scale ?

Scale is the rock like deposit formed when certain minerals, primarily Calcium and Magnesium precipitate from water.

Calcium and Magnesium from rocks such as Limestone, marble or other natural deposits are dissolved into water through natural interactions. We measure the levels of these as Water Hardness. If something then happens to the water which causes these dissolved minerals to return to their insoluble ‘rock’ state then scale is formed. This reversal of states, can occur very easily when water is heated, chilled or when something happens to certain properties of the water.

The higher the level of hardness gives us an indication of how much scale and also a potential measure of how likely scale will form.

Scale has various appearances and can even have various colours depend on what other minerals are present in the water.

Removing Limescale

Using 3M’s range of products can help protect your equipment, reduce service costs and protect your brand through consistent product quality.

Polyphosphate (products with –S and -MS suffix) - this is an inhibitory treatment of scale. A small level of a special Polyphosphate is added automatically to the water to reduce the ability of the water hardness to return to its rocklike state. With polyphosphates the calcium and magnesium are not removed/reduced from the water.

This can be used for a wide range of hardness levels dependent on the applications. The benefits of it are:

Small amount of polyphosphate needed to treat large volumes.

Small compact cost effective solutions available.

Scale formed is ‘softer’ and easier to remove.

Resin ( ScaleGard®Pro range) - this is a scale reduction treatment for scale. By interacting with the resin the calcium and magnesium levels are actually removed from the water. Dependent on the resin used and system design various different levels of hardness removal can be achieved.

The 3M ScaleGard®Pro range comes with either no bypass versions or fixed bypass versions to allow customisation of the water quality for your application.

Bypass versions are designed to leave some of the minerals in the water to provide optimum taste to coffee, as it benefits the extraction of ground beans in coffee.

Reverse Osmosis – this is the most effective filtration of water and can actually be used to remove practically all of the minerals from water.

As it is removing calcium and magnesium from water it is again a scale reduction treatment for scale.

It uses a very fine membrane and pressure to leave no scale forming minerals in the water. Use of blending with normally filtered water allows minerals to be added back into the water to allow complete control and customisation of minerals levels.

This means the water can be completely customised for each application or standardised so water is the same wherever it is used.